Well, I'm happy to report that I've pretty well already achieved more this season than I really thought I would. I have to admit, quite on characteristically, I was fairly pessimistic about the season. The first couple months of training showed no sign of this season being very successful, nor did the first race. Flagstaff gave me the first glimmer of hope for the season where I put together a string of pretty good workouts. After continued success in workouts post-Flagstaff and a new personal best in the 800m here in one of the Q Victoria track series races my normal optimism started to come back.
It seems to have paid off. I went over to Vancouver for the Harry Jerome Track Classic. Originally I was put in the national level 1500 which pretty well would have been a time trial between Logan Burke and I. After some carefully worded e-mails to the meet director I was moved up into the Olympic Development race. On paper this section looked much better and promised a good time. In retrospect, either race probably would have been good. Logan ran really strong and if both of us had of been in that race we may have ran even faster than I eventually did in the OD section. On a positive note I took the win for the second year in a row in that section at Jerome running 3:50.22. There were tons of amazing results that day. There were 6 different sections of the 1500, national, olympic development, and international for both men's and women's. Our group won 5 out of 6 sections, only missing the international women's section. Even though we didn't get the win, all three of the girls from out group ran Personal bests, seasonal bests, or close to. The success from the group was continued in the 800s with wins and PB's and SB's and smart tatical races all over the place. It was really fun to be there and seeing everyone's success.
After coming off Jerome it was hard to believe we could be stronger as a group, but we did just that at our home meet here in Victoria. Logan, Cliff, Goeff, and myself all ran in the international section. Literally every one of us ran either a HUGE PB or a significant SB. Cliff went dropped from 3:50 all the way down to 3:46.50, it was nutty! Logan dopped 2 seconds off his PB from 3:49 to 3:47. Geoff took a second off his SB to run 3:40 and I ran within 0.2 second of my PB running 3:46.83. It was awesome, everyone was so stoked after we crossed the finish line. Hugs and highfives all around it was just a great atmosphere to be in. Along with our great performances was Kyle Irvine's second sub-4 in a row with James Barnes dipping under the barrier as well. Big Doug Oxland and Josh Cloutier both ran very well. There is just too many people to mention. Lemlem rocked out a personal best in the 800 with a2:03. Laura Mitic has been a machine all year. I don't know the numbers for sure, but she has dropped an outrageous amount of seconds off her PB. She ran 4:34 in the national section of the 1500m where 4 other girls from the group all ran very well. The women in the international section did really well, but I have to give best performance to Julia Tchanz, who continually blows my mind, running a big PB in 4:22. Andrew Ellerton snagged another win with Quin Ferguson running great for 3rd place.
Everyone is just buzzing right now. It's great to see fantastic results from the people you are out on the track and trails with shedding blood, sweat, and tears on the daily.
Feeling good is a good feeling.
P.S. I apologize if I missed anyone. There were just too many awesome performances.
